


Shave You Smooth

by Willowe



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Facial Shaving, Gen, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Mentions of Alcohol Abuse, Trans Tony Stark, Transitioning, Transphobia, takes place after the death of Tony's parents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-25 11:28:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9818360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Willowe/pseuds/Willowe
Summary: Howard never said as much, but Tony knows he always wanted a son.





	

**Author's Note:**

> TW for transphobia, including self-misgendering. Most of the angst is from Tony's complicated parental feelings and the death of his parents however he is still a young, isolated trans man struggling not to internalize other people's transphobia. Read with caution.
> 
> Tony is about 19 in this story and I've played with canon to have his parents died when he was 17. See end notes for a more detailed explanation of the timeline.
> 
> (Title loosely lifted from "Paris (Ooh La La)" by Grace Potter and the Nocturnals.)

Tony hasn’t shaved his face in a while. He generally makes a point of keeping it smooth, for now at least; he hates the babyface look it gives him, but he hates the peachfuzz even more. It reminds him too much of the fine, nearly-invisible hairs his mother used to tell him he had to pluck. He sees them in the mirror and he thinks of tweezers held in shaking hands, his mother gripping his chin with delicate fingers to inspect his face. He thinks of her quiet _You’re such a pretty girl when you put in the effort._

Those are the memories that always lead to him staring down the bottom of another empty bottle. So he tries not to think about them, if he can help it.

It’s been harder, lately, what with the _not shaving_ and all. It helps that he doesn’t have to go anywhere or do anything. No need to look in the mirror if no one’s going to be seeing him except DUM-E. After all, Obie still has him on what’s basically house arrest. “Give me time to spin this, Tony,” Obie keeps saying. “We’ll revise some of our employment policies, use this as an example of how progressive we are, and the press will eat it up. You just have to give me time.”

It’s been over a year but that’s fine. Tony has his workshop and he’s churning out patents like nobody’s business and he’s almost, _almost_ figured out how to advance his AI programming to the next level. So maybe he’s also barely been seen in public for the last year- but at least that’s a year where he doesn’t have to see the double-takes that people do. A year without the stares and the whispers and the insults. A year where the press hasn’t been printing unflattering photos, with even less flattering headlines.

A year where he’s been allowed to be _himself_ , really for the first time in his life. A year where he can take his testosterone, surgically remove his breasts… debate the merits of growing or not growing a beard.

It’s not a matter of figuring out whether he wants the beard or not. He wants it, wants it so badly it’s like a physical ache in his chest. It's the only thing he can think of short of plastic surgery that will erase the last of the femininity still clinging to his features, because even if Rhodey continually assures him that he looks "just like any other gangly white boy" Tony can see the truth. He can still see the roundness of his face, the too-slender line of his neck, the skin still soft from years of expensive facials and masks.

He wonders, sometimes, if he'll ever stop seeing those things about himself but at the very least a beard has to help take the spotlight away from everything he hates about his face.

The problem isn't wanting the beard. The problem isn’t even that he can’t grow a beard yet. He has facial hair in abundance, but it’s not pretty. It's thick but patchy along his sideburns, scraggly and uneven under his chin and down his neck, and honestly it's probably a good thing that Obie told him to lie low because he's not fit to be seen in public with his face looking like this. Apparently his father's mustache wasn't just a fashion statement, but a facial hair choice born out of necessity; Stark men, it seems, do not grow beards with ease.

It would've been nice to know that, oh, anytime before now but Tony can't imagine very many men discussing their genetic disposition towards shitty facial hair with their daughters. And it's not like there’s anyone left for him to ask about it now anyway.

Tony's not an expert in beard-growing, this being his first serious attempt and all, but he's been hoping that if he lets it continue to stubbornly grow in however it wants he'll be able to shave and shape it into something passable down the road. But now, staring at himself in the mirror, razor in hand and viciously squashing down the part of his brain that still flinches at the sight of his own face, Tony has no idea where to begin. Or rather he knows that he should start with the worst bits of it but figuring what in this mess counts as _worse_ is harder than he anticipated.

Tony learned how to pluck stray hairs from his mother, but it was Rhodey who taught him how to shave. With both Howard and Jarvis dead and Obie busy trying to both run Stark Industries and stop the board from locking Tony out of his own damn company, there hadn’t been any other options. Rhodey had been a good teacher, patient and teasing without being cruel, without making Tony feel like an idiot for not knowing how to do this.

Still, Tony takes his time as he shaves his jaw and down the column of his throat, barely daring to breathe for fear of the razor slipping and slicing into his skin. He can do this. He knows how to do this. It’s the same general principle as shaving his legs, only over a different area of skin, but he always hated nicking his legs. He hates nicking his face even more.

The next section he tackles are his sideburns, down the sides of his face- not evenly, because he’s afraid of shaving too far up and ruining his hairline, but he does his best. His best option for now at least might be leaving it as a goatee but he doesn’t like the way the hairs on his chin are coming in. He starts shaving without thinking about, around his chin and along his lower lip and-

Tony stops suddenly, eyes snapping back to look at his entire face instead of just around his mouth.

With the uneven mustache now decorating his upper lip, he looks uncannily like his father. Sure he still has his mother’s eyes and his hair is longer than Howard ever styled it, but… but that’s _Howard_ staring back at him.

Tony has seen a lot of things when he stares into the mirror but he’s never seen his father before.

The razor clatters into the sink and Tony braces his hands on the edge of the counter, breathing heavily and wondering what the hell he’s supposed to do with this information. With knowing that he looks so much like his father, now that he has the world’s worst mustache growing in.

He’s been compared to Howard in other ways, of course. His brains, mostly, his engineering and inventions. His drinking too, more recently, on the few occasions he’s fucked up and let the press get evidence of him shitfaced- but mostly it’s been his intelligence. Tony would unveil a computer or a new patent and the first words out of everyone’s mouth would be, _She’s just like her father_.

Howard never knew how to take that, encouraging Tony’s intelligence one second and insisting that “my daughter has better things to do than dirty her hands with grease!” the next. Tony went to MIT, got the best education that Howard could buy, and still Tony was only ever a disappointment. The daughter that acted out, that cut her hair with kitchen scissors, that had calloused hands and a dirty mouth and a drinking habit.

Howard never said as much, but Tony knows he always wanted a son. A _real_ son, not a daughter who acted like one and only started taking testosterone when Howard was dead and gone.

Tony knows his parents loved him… but he wonders if they would have loved him more if he had always looked like this. He wonders if _Howard_ could have loved him more, if Tony had always looked more like him.

Tony picks up the razor with shaky hands, attacking the mustache with a viciousness he usually reserves for failed experiments and early afternoon hangovers. He nicks his nostril, slices into his upper lip, and he doesn’t even care. He needs that mustache gone, he needs it off his face, he needs-

His face is smooth again, all the hair he’s been stubbornly trying to grow for months lying in piles in the sink and on the counter, and Tony throws the razor as hard as he can not even caring where it ends up. His face stares back at him from the mirror and it’s his face again, with all it’s feminine failings.

With a scream of rage Tony punches the mirror. It shatters, glass flying everywhere and embedding in his hand. Blood drips down from between his clenched fingers, dripping into the sink and mixing with the hair he shaved away.

He should clean that up. But right now he needs a drink even more.

**Author's Note:**

> As per IM1, Tony graduated from MIT at 17. His parents died sometime after that and Tony took control of the company at 21. 
> 
> Later canon established that Tony's birthday is May 29, 1970 which has never sat right with me because that puts him at 21 when his parents die in December 1991. That makes the pointed comment about Tony taking control of the company at 21 very strange because it implies that there was more of a time gap than there actually was. 
> 
> So I've adjusted the timeline. MIT graduates in June and I've had his parents die that same December, making Tony 17 at the time of their death. Tony never came out before they died but once he was 18 and legally an adult he started transitioning. I'm not an expert on transitioning options in 1992 however I'm assuming that if you have Tony Stark's fortune you can get a lot done and I've run with that.


End file.
